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O Connell Home Lackendarragh

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This is a most interesting house. The original house of 1916-1921 period is the one on the left side of the photo and has been demolished so this is a copy of a 10 year old photo. The O Connell brothers Michael and John were staunch IRA activists with the Lombardstown Company and their home was a magnet for volunteers on the run and as a meeting place but its most famous claim to fame is that it was the house where General Lucas was imprisoned immediately after his capture near Fermoy. Gen. Lucas was commander of the British Forces in a number of barracks around Fermoy and was the most senior officer captured anywhere in Ireland and it was a tribute to the Lombardstown Company that he was brought into their area to be minded. A very interesting story involving this imprisonment happened when another O Connell, Patrick, arrived home from boarding school in St. Colemans Fermoy. When he entered the kitchen his mother asked him was there any news from Fermoy and he said all hell was about to break out as the British soldiers are planning to bomb and burn down the town over the capture of their commander. The stranger sitting by the fire, reading a book, immediately questioned young Patrick and then went into the room where Lucas was held under guard. He emerged in a short time with a written instruction from Lucas to his officers in Fermoy that the town or its inhabitants were not to be touched. One of the O Connells could not deliver the note as that may lead the search back to their house so Myles McCarthy who was on guard duty took the letter by bicycle the 25 miles to Fermoy but he also could not show his face as he was on the run so Lucas gave the name of an establishment in Fermoy which was frequented by the British soldiers and they would deliver it safely. When Myles knocked on that door the occupants refused to open up and he then roused out the local Parish Priest who immediately set out for the barracks and Fermoy was saved. This story deserves to be told as “the youth from Glantane who saved the town of Fermoy from destruction”. The stranger reading the book by the fireside was none other than Liam Lynch himself and Myles McCarthy’s home (now Paudie O Flynns) was the house where Gen. Lucas was moved to from Lackendarragh and imprisoned there also. Michael O Connell rose through the ranks to become quartermaster in Liam Lynch’s Brigade. He was an accountant with Lombardstown Co-op creamery. A young student, in Dublin, named Liam (William) O Connell was shot and killed in an ambush on a British army lorry of troops and he was a brother to Michael and John and is buried in Glantane Churchyard graveyard (See CO-GLSJ-0004 Glantane in www.historicgraves.com). The monument in Glantane commemorates the three volunteers killed in action from Kilshannig Parish, Liam (William) O Connell, Michael Kiely and Ned Waters.